Digital lighting technologies, i.e., illumination based on semiconductor light sources, such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs), offer a viable alternative to traditional fluorescent, HID, and incandescent lamps. Functional advantages and benefits of LEDs include high energy conversion and optical efficiency, durability, lower operating costs, and many others. Recent advances in LED technology have provided efficient and robust full-spectrum lighting sources that enable a variety of lighting effects in many applications. Some of the fixtures embodying these sources feature a lighting module, including one or more LEDs capable of producing different colors, e.g., red, green, and blue, as well as a processor for independently controlling the output of the LEDs in order to generate a variety of colors and color-changing lighting effects, for example, as discussed in detail in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,016,038 and 6,211,626, incorporated herein by reference.
Optical wireless communication (“OWC”) facilitates wireless transmission of information using visible and invisible light. One type of OWC is Visible Light Communication (“VLC”), in which the visible spectrum of light emitted by lighting units is modulated to carry information. Other types of OWC may employ other forms of light, including but not limited to infrared and/or ultraviolet. Equipping lighting units for OWC may enable the lighting units to support networking-based applications, such as online retail, coupon distribution, airline/hotel/train check-ins, online review services, and so forth. As OWC-based applications gain popularity in indoor and outdoor environments, the Quality of Service (“QoS”) provided by the employed OWC technology to the various applications takes on increasing importance. QoS may be primarily defined by packet drop rates, jitter, and/or channel utilization, and may be impacted by varying demand generated by end users that carry or otherwise operate various mobile devices (e.g., smart phones, tablets, smart watches, other wearable devices, vehicle computing systems, etc.). For example, in outdoor environments, mobility patterns of individuals may cause significant variability in traffic patterns. Accordingly, there is a need in the art for awareness about mobility patterns and/or demographics of end users for delivering optimal QoS and differentiated services to OWC-based applications.